


Hypothermia

by KalicoFox



Series: The Adventure Zone Oneshots [5]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Taako's temper isn't like most people's, he gets mad and gets even, non-graphic, warning: attempted suicide of a minor character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 09:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11438187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalicoFox/pseuds/KalicoFox
Summary: Taako's anger isn't like Lup's. He isn't a flare-up-and-forget-it kind of guy. No. Taako's anger is a lot slower to be seen, and a lot more dangerous.





	Hypothermia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



No one seems to realize that Taako is, quite possibly, the most dangerous member of the IPRE exploration team. They look at Magnus, with his bulging muscles and enormous greataxe and totally pass over small, _pretty_ Taako, with his long hair and big eyes and flimsy little wand.

Even those who understand that magic can be more insidious and dangerous than the strongest of fighters overlook him; focusing on Lup, with her love of the more explosive side of magic and her loud, outgoing personality. They see her hot temper and say ‘ah yes, this one would do the most damage. Don’t make her mad, or you might end up hurt.’

They don’t realize that the most dangerous anger isn’t the firecracker, hot and fast and explosive, but the glacier; taking everything with the same, slow inevitability and freezing it as it was found. Small slights, little insults, goofs that might have gone a little too far; all are preserved within the ice, to be examined again and again so that they are never forgotten.

It took him a long time, too long, maybe, to learn how to dismiss the little things. To learn that not every slight is something that needs to be avenged, and not every goof is meant as an attack.

Forgiveness is something that was drummed into him (though he thinks it doesn’t mean the same for him as it does for everyone else).

He has never learned how to forget.

 

His anger is too big. Too encompassing. It’s a living, breathing being in his chest, and sometimes Taako feels as though he can’t breath; that he’s being choked with the sheer force of the rage that he’s built up through his centuries of life.

His anger is dangerous. Not just to him, but to the people around him, and Taako knows it. Has known it since he was barely in his twenties and someone had insulted Lup.

He doesn’t remember who it had been.

He doesn’t even remember the insult.

All he remembers is the way his sister’s face had gone dead white beneath the golden tan of their heritage, and how she hadn’t spoken for two days.

He remembers the sheer, alien _rage_ that had swept through him, and he remembers his vengeance.

Minor illusions that created small, quiet skitterings only _just_ inside the man’s hearing range. Hissings and murmurings that _almost_ sounded like words. Shadows with shapes that twisted and writhed just inside his perception. 

Taako had watched with cold satisfaction as the man who had hurt his sister edged closer and closer to insanity with each new illusion and each cantrip. No one else noticed anything until he took a kitchen knife and tried to slit his own throat in the middle of the marketplace. 

It was almost a fitting punishment, Taako mused as the man was wrestled to the ground and dragged away.

No one was allowed to hurt the people who belonged to him.

_No one._

 

Taako is the most dangerous member of the IPRE exploration team, and no one knows. He prefers it that way, because he’s grown up a little more and he’s realized that the best way for him to protect the people he cares about is if they don’t know he’s trying to protect them. 

It makes things just that much more expedient.


End file.
